Leonard Engelman, the esteemed makeup artist who worked on films including Rocky IV, The Princess Diaries, Batman & Robin and How the Grinch Stole Christmas and did Cher’s makeup for more than 30 years, has died. He was 83.
Engelman died Thursday at Northridge Hospital Medical Center, his wife of 42 years, artist Esther Engelman, told The Hollywood Reporter. The cause of death is unclear, she said.
The son of a Hollywood makeup artist, Engelman labored for a long time to convince the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to install a makeup branch, as those artisans had always been “at-large” members. And when it did so in 2006, he was elected its first governor. Later, he worked to have hairstylists added.
He also served as an Academy vice president and board member for many years.
Engelman received Emmy nominations in 1972 for an episode of Night Gallery and in 2001 for the miniseries Jackie Bouvier Kennedy Onassis, starring Joanne Whalley. He was honored with a lifetime achievement award from the Hollywood Makeup Artists & Hair Stylists Guild in 2017.
As Cher’s personal makeup artist, Engelman worked with the actress and style icon on her photo shoots and on her films Moonstruck (1987), Suspect (1987), The Witches of Eastwick (1987), Mermaids (1990), Faithful (1996), Tea With Mussolini (1999) and Burlesque (2010).
Minutes after she was announced as the winner of the best actress Oscar for Moonstruck in 1988, the first person she thanked at the Shrine Auditorium podium was her “makeup man, who had a lot to work with.”
During his 50-year career, Engelman also handled makeup for Sylvester Stallone on Rambo: First Blood Part II (1985), Rocky IV (1985) and Cobra (1986).
For their first collaboration, he pioneered the use of silicon, rather than rubber — which didn’t absorb perspiration — for the “appliances” on Stallone’s face for his swelling, bruises, cuts, etc., he explained in a 2019 interview.
Engelman also worked with Debra Winger on Betrayed (1988), Everybody Wins (1990) and Wilder Napalm (1993) and with Meg Ryan on Joe Versus the Volcano (1990), Sleepless in Seattle (1993), Flesh and Bone (1993) and When a Man Loves a Woman (1994).
Born in Burbank on May 9, 1941, Leonard Alex Engelman was the son of a makeup artist with the same first, middle and last name who worked on lots of 1940s Westerns before he died when his boy was just 11.
Engelman graduated from Burbank High School, landed a job at Universal and received his first credit on Alfred Hitchcock’s Topaz (1969).
His résumé also included the movies The Black Stallion (1979), Cat People (1982), Ghostbusters (1984), Beverly Hills Cop (1984), Twins (1988), The Bonfire of the Vanities (1990), Heat (1995) and Oz the Great and Powerful (2013) and the TV shows Cagney & Lacey and The Shield.
Engelman trained several generations of artists at the Cinema Makeup School in Los Angeles and was a beloved member of Local 706 (the makeup and hairstylists guild) for more than five decades.
In addition to his wife, survivors include their children, Steven, Kimberly, Anna and Jennifer (a makeup artist, too), and six grandchildren.
“I was told when I was starting off as a makeup artist that if you were going to be really good, you had to learn everything, you had to learn beauty, all the characters, all the aging, all the hair work, all of the bruising, the prosthetics,” he once said. “I did everything I could to learn all of that.”
Scott Feinberg contributed to this report.